Humanity Gone (Book 3): Rebirth (10 page)

I should do the same, but hell, I trust them all. If they say this cowboy is fine. Then so be it. Everyone in the room has someone to be close
with. I turn to Ryan as he checks the slide on a rifle. The only real friend I've had has lost his mind. I may as well just be by myself.

“I'll take the first watch,” I say. Most return with a nod and then go back to their discussions. It wouldn’t take a doctor to realize they are all getting sick. Laura and Nate will work against time and around the clock, and if they fail, Carter and I could
be the only ones alive by the end of the week. A few coughs sound down the corridor.

Hell, maybe the end of tomorrow.

I grab the rifle from in front of Ryan and head out of the lobby and down the hall. At the other end of the building is a patient’s room that overlooks the main street leading to the hospital. If they follow us here, they probably will use that road.

I pull the chair over to the window and open the blinds ever so slightly. Late daylight illuminates the streets in a deepening gold. It looks quiet all over.

Desolate.

Occasional snowflakes drop through the air. Despite everything, the city out the window looks peaceful. In a little, I will go around and make sure that all the entrances
are locked and barricaded. Carter and I will have to do much of the work.

I don't mind.

As I squat, I pull the chair beneath me and take a seat close to the window. I gaze down the city road and hope that I don’t see anything.

Chapter 13: Nathan

“I can’t believe this thing is still in full working condition. I was half expecting scrap, or the best case scenario that it only needed complete recalibration.”

“We lucked out,” Laura answers while leaning into the microscope. This shouldn’t take much more. We are hours away from knowing exactly how to formulate a cure.
And to think I officially never made it past AP Biology. I just hope that the nearly twenty-four hours it took to reach this point weren't too many...

It seems like we have traveled such a long road to reach here.
To reach this moment. In addition, I do not just refer to today, but the last six years.

In Florida, after the plague, our science team spent countless weeks studying chemistry and physics in the little free time we found at the hotel. Then, while with the Resistance, we initially were concerned with a community's survival, but our natural curiosity began to consume us. How did this virus begin? Where did it come from? What part of the system did it attack?
Why only adults?

These questions filled my mind day in and day out while we struggled to survive in Florida, but I only managed to begin answering them once we found relative stability from within the Resistance. Like man at the beginning of time, we thinkers are only able to think when there is security and food to go around. I fell into textbook after textbook trying to hypothesize how this virus could have even come to be. Luckily, the digital
revolution had not completely occurred when the virus took over and enough print sources still existed. Many scholarly works were only being published in digital formats, but when I went out with the supply parties, I was able to find the periodicals that I needed in libraries. They’d been collecting dust even before the plague eviscerated the country.

These references provided enough information for us to eliminate some of our hypotheses and present new ones. Our first objective was to determine the trigger and the specific physiological target for the virus. The only facts are that children seemed immune, and at least at the initial outbreak, that it was restricted to the borders of the continental United States. These two peculiar characteristics are enough for even the most experienced virologists and epidemiologists to wrap their heads
around. We had ruled out the possibility of it being bacterial when primary studies done at the start of the epidemic showed no reaction to antibiotics.

Our first true breakthrough occurred in one of our deep-dives. The group of us locked ourselves in what appeared to be an old mathematics classroom exploring the possible scenarios of the virus’s target. After discussing some conclusions that a late virologist had drawn in a very recent science journal, we developed our first general hypothesis. Others came and went, but that one
couldn’t be disproved no matter how many samples we examined.

The plague is a highly advanced autoimmune disease. It
is introduced into the body and targets regions of DNA strands that become less prevalent in the body due to age. Some segments of DNA naturally wither away as the years go on. The virus infects everyone, but a certain amount of this genetic deterioration is necessary for it to begin attacking the body. It lays dormant in those who were under nineteen at the initial outbreak. For whatever reason, it's now activated in everyone.

The scary part about all this is there is no conceivable way that nature constructed a virus to behave in this manner. This was
man-made. Although more than likely, whoever designed this would have needed years of experience. So, either this virus was an unexpected outbreak, or another country is responsible for the plague. Needless to say, my own capabilities can do little to help answer those questions. I just needed to find a way to create a cure that no one else was able to.

And
, by God, we've nearly done it. With the proper sample from an immune donor, we'll have this done in no time.

This device will finish what we started. With the proper equations, it can check within a blood sample for the major genetic code dealing with immunity. Having immune hosts is perhaps what has given us the best possibility of finding a
cure. They are so rare. And our group managed to have two.

That is of course why I decided to stay with Ryan after the attack at the school. Staying with those who were immune seemed like an intelligent move. The others said they didn't care anymore. I couldn't really argue against them, but I am lucky I stuck to my gut. I wonder how many of them are still alive after this second outbreak.

I shouldn't get ahead of myself though. We nearly have the cure, but it's not yet in our possession. And this is the hardest part. Considering the millions of sequences imaginable, it will take an incomprehensible amount of checks to determine the immunity sequence within a non-infected person's blood sample. We’ve been able to isolate potential chains within the DNA sequence where the resistant chain most likely resides. However, that still requires nearly a thousand tests to find the exact sequence for immunity. Each test requires five ccs of a single donor’s blood to analyze. The machine will speed up the process significantly - it can run hundreds of tests every half hour.

The only catch: it must be the same donor's blood.

My original plan was to test once every few days, so the donor could have time to regenerate the plasma. We don’t have days. Most of us are coughing and have rashes. If it weren’t for the morphine I am sneaking into my arm when Laura isn’t looking, I would probably already be bed ridden from the pain. I'm willing to die, but I'm not willing to watch the rest of them die, too.

We need the cure by tomorrow, and that leaves one solution...

I tense every muscle in my body, furiously searching for other options. I would need months, years to reconcile the data associated with two immune donors. Options… options…

Exhaling slowly, I allow my eyes to turn slowly to the door.
Carter and David…

One of them has to die.

The work has to continue. I shake my head. When we have the genetic code of an uninfected host, the cure will quickly follow.

At least I hope it does...

Chapter 14: Jocelyn

“Hey, let's go for a walk. I'm sure this place has a lot more to offer.”

I open my eyes to see Nichols looking down at me with a small smile. A hint of the rash runs up the side of his neck. For once, he isn't wearing that damn hat. His hair is blonde. I don't know if I noticed it before in all the time we have spent together in the past twenty-four hours. It brings a smile to my face.

“Why?” I whisper. Speaking is a little bit painful – the kind of pain that lingers in the back of
the throat. I look around the room. Caitlyn lies in the gurney beside me with shut eyes. I rarely leave her alone. She is really sleeping this time. It has only been a day since we arrived at the hospital. Out of everyone in the group, Nichols and I seem to be the most resistant to the virus itself, but resistant doesn’t mean anything. We’ll share the same fate as the others, just later. I swing my feet over the side, and stand up. Dizziness momentarily overtakes me. Nichols grabs my arm.

“I'm okay,” I reassure him. The room stops spinning. After pulling the thick covers a little higher onto Caitlyn, we leave the room and head down the hallway. In the darkness, we find a set of steps and proceed to the upper level. As I reach to open the door to the fifth floor, Nichols stops my hand.

“Let's check out the roof,” he says with a smile, barely visible with the faint light of his flashlight. We continue to climb. The stairs end, and he opens the final door. The draft of cold air is strangely refreshing. We walk to the railing, surrounded by tall buildings that frame the world around us. I catch glimpses of landmarks that I never thought I'd see again.

“Quite a view,” I say. Nichols nods, moving beside me. It's been so long since I've seen the city up close. I want to smile, but only the bottom half of my face succeeds.

“Forgive me for being forward, but something’s really weighing on you. More than just being sick.”

“Yea.
This place used to be my home. I hoped that when I saw it again, things would be better. It's not. We're all dying, now.”

“I may be new with you, but I believe it's going to be okay,” he says, staring into the hospital's reflection on the side of a glass skyscraper.

“It was difficult enough watching my father die from this thing - watching someone you love suffer so much. But it’s not just that. My brother and I came across this park ranger. The agony displayed all over his face. He looked like he suffered so much. But in the end, he was so strong, maybe even helping to save our lives in his own death. And I’m… I’m afraid it’ll all happen to me, and I won’t have the ability to die with such dignity. These past years have been far from easy, but I've never wanted to die. Despite loss after loss, I always believed that it would get better. My faith is running out. Especially if I lose her downstairs...”

“You don’t think those two will be able to find the cure?”

“I don't have faith in much of anything.” I look up at the sky and exhale.

“What about faith in God?” he asks optimistically. I laugh.

“Especially not faith in God.” I look to him. Despite my contained laughter, I have his complete attention. My grin subsides. “I don’t know how you keep it up.”

“Sure, things have been rough, but it’s happened before. Maybe this is God’s plan; maybe it’s not. When things are at their worst, that’s when we need him the most.”

“So you think an all-powerful God would let this happen? I still prayed when I lost mom. I still prayed when I lost dad and then Jon. After Sara though, I've given up. No one is in control of this madness. There is no God.”

“Perhaps.
But I still see his little miracles.”

“Like?”

“Where to begin.” He turns towards me, his hands jammed in his coat pockets. I reluctantly meet his gaze. “We're still alive. Against all odds, here we are. We've survived when thousands have died. If I wouldn't have found you when I did, you'd probably already be gone. And now we sit in this hospital, facing certain death, yet there is still hope. Those two are probably the closest in the whole country to getting a cure, and they are here with us.”

“It's luck Nichols. It's all luck.”

“Well that may be, but I like to think it’s something more.” The right side of his mouth turns up in a smile as he leans his elbows back onto the railing.

“Anyway, you’re stronger than me I guess,” I answer, separating from him and beginning back towards the door. “It's easier to not have faith than to have it.”

“Not stronger,” he says, not changing his posture, but turning his head slightly towards me.

I stop my stride and look at the cowboy from my side. He has this smile. It's contagious. There is something about him that makes me
kind of think that no matter what happens that it will be okay.

It's a security I haven’t felt
since the cabin.

I cough into my hand; my throat throbs after I finish.

“We better get back. I don’t know ‘bout you, but I’m exhausted,” Nichols says walking towards me and placing his hand on my back. “We can look for supplies later.”

I nod. We head back to the lobby. The farther we get, the more tired I become. Exhaustion floods my insides. My steps become shorter and less frequent.

It won’t be long now until-

Nichols takes my hand, and I briefly forget my fear.